


first meeting, first dance, first fight

by ninemoons42



Series: love and blades: a rebelcaptain AU [6]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - James Bond Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Canon-Typical Violence, Dancing, First Dance, First Meetings, Gen, Inspired by Music, Pre-Relationship, by which I mean modern era spy story violence, kicking ass in all her finery, kicking ass in all his finery, written in the style of Casino Royale 2006
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-08
Updated: 2017-09-08
Packaged: 2018-12-25 04:20:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12027990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: In which Cassian Andor, agent of the Alliance organization, meets "Agent Stardust" of the Partisans for the very first time.Nothing about this meeting goes as expected.





	first meeting, first dance, first fight

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write rebelcaptain dancing because of [Utena and Anthy dancing](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/58937491627/filmkulte-lapocalypse-de-ladolescence-2006).

_Mission objective:_ , read the words on the screen, and he waits, not without a quiet breath, not without a shivering feeling of unease slowly spiking into his gut.

Cold, suddenly, in the cramped confines of the tiny room.

The time is running out for him, in this place: come the stroke of the hour, he’ll need to leave. Plane tickets and a fresh passport in his other hand. The photograph in the passport is -- of his own face. That sort of comes as a necessity.

But the name on the passport, the citizenship, the day and month and year of birth, and every other little detail typed into the fields, laminated onto the official paper with its intricate anti-theft embellishments: every single one of those items is false, and therefore the passport is no more than a sham, and he will still smile and hand it smilingly over to the person at the airport check-in counter. 

They will grant him passage, and they will wave him off onto the plane he’s supposed to catch. He’ll get -- a drink, at least, if not a meal. Something something gin or vodka or mezcal or, well, he’ll take a cabernet sauvignon if he has to, so long as he has something to hold on to: the cool clear shape of a glass fitting into his hand, just so he has some kind of tangible reminder of things that can shatter as he’s no longer permitted to.

After all, he is the tip of the spear and the entire sharp length of the blade. He is the weapon in the shadows, and he serves one nation, all nations --

No. Forget the poetic license.

He’s in the employ of a group of people who call themselves the Alliance, and he’s found his way into the exclusive ranks of those who went out on the group’s missions. Kill people or protect them, damn them or save them: his not to reason why, or at least not to question the orders he gets no matter how strange or unsavory he might find them. It might as well be a clause in the contract that now holds his signature, the ink he’d laid onto the document barely more than a year old.

He would tap his foot if he were in any way upright, waiting for the next bits coming after that too-familiar real-time transmission: but right now he’s curled up on his side in this coffin-space of a capsule hotel room, and there’s no room for him to stretch out properly. Side to side, or head to toe, no dice: he’s trapped in here, stuck for as long as it takes for the other side of the connection to actually get on with it and complete the message.

He clicks his fingers against the console, dormant now except for where he’s charging a small external battery pack, nondescript matte black to match the holster lying next to him. Cold black pistol in a cold black holster, straps coiled tight, waiting, like he’s waiting. Hollow the sounds he produces, hollow quiet futile, because it’s not like he can actually reach the rest of the Alliance, not this way, where they’re not even going to wait for him to acknowledge receipt of the objective. 

He’s expected to go and _do_ , and that’s that.

Cassian Andor, following orders, and willingly.

He’s spent a lot of time defying orders, and now: he’s waiting to follow these upcoming ones, if they ever arrive anyway.

Quiet click from his phone. 

The message finally completes, and what he sees makes him blink.

_Mission objective: Agent Stardust._

“And do what, exactly,” he says, to the resounding silence of this little space of his.

The text flashes. Green to red to white, and then -- well, that’s a clue.

He has to find this person. The rest is not up to him.

His phone chirps, again, and this time, it means it’s time for him to leave.

Beddings in a roll shoved into the corner of the bunk. Gun, phone, battery pack, and the small battered knapsack that contains a change of clothes and a few other things: these are the things he takes out with him, with the stony silence of the capsule hotel’s proprietor ringing in his ears as he steps toward the taxi stand. 

Tokyo flashes past him, steel and glass and concrete and -- cherry blossoms, incongruous on the noontime breeze, pink shadows falling in the merciless urban midday. 

Spring.

Past a road sign for Akasaka.

He remembers the steely-eyed nod he’d received two nights ago: white makeup and crimson-shadowed eyes and mouth and eyebrows. Brocade and silk, purple and silver and green, and a massive yellow stone set into a golden setting. Of course the geisha of that particular place knew what was going on: he’d only needed to glance at the threads set into the purple kimono, a tiny circular motif just below a crisp white collar: the wing and star of the Alliance. 

And with their help and their songs and their conversation he’d assassinated a man who wasn’t wearing his shoulderboards and “salad bar”, trying to go incognito. Trying to pass himself off as a wealthy old man coming to Tokyo for the first time. The wealth was real and so was the age: the reason for coming to Tokyo was a flat untruth.

He remembers that woman in rich robes as she summoned other men to take the dead away: the dead who had once been notorious for spreading a message of “kill all people who aren’t white people”.

He eyes the back of his hand, in the here and now, and thinks of the ghost of pain, of running almost-too-hot water over his skin, and the clouds of soft leaf-like scent coming from the soap he’d used after the deed was done.

His hands look clean.

He runs his palms over his knees, once and only once.

Wonders, vaguely, about the state of Agent Stardust’s hands.

His comrades whisper about the other agencies, of course: they talk in the corners and make sure they can deny their conversations, make sure they can lie and say they’re talking about everything else.

But he’s working in a business that is slowly becoming crowded, and he’s working in a business where gossip is actually a valuable commodity, and he’s heard the stories. Heard the speculation. 

He doesn’t know what to make of Agent Stardust’s reported kill-count, relative to the number of years they’ve been working -- and that latter item is in dispute, as well.

The reports are that Agent Stardust is young, and lethal, and reticent to the point of being rude.

But if they really are as efficient and effective as the stories say, they might just be Cassian’s favorite kind of people.

(How is it possible to have any kind of conversation in the middle of dead bodies, anyway, much less a witty conversation? He’s not familiar with that style of coping.)

As he steps into the airport, as he successfully navigates another check-in, he considers the other possibility.

If the actual mission involves neutralizing Agent Stardust, he’s going to need several extra weapons and a lot of ammunition.

On the plane: it’s easy to stay awake with a glass in hand and the hideous image of red blood splattered across pristine paper and wood.

Easy to stay awake when he’s trying to consider something very, very difficult.

How do you kill someone who thinks like you?

*

Quiet murmuring in a corner of the ballroom as he slips past the oblivious security personnel, and he suddenly has to sidestep so he doesn’t crash into the woman in the long black gown.

It doesn’t really pay to get in the way of anyone carrying something like a cello: and particularly not the spare incomplete curves and strings of an electric cello. Anyone carrying anything like that knows how to use it, and knows how to use it against any and all comers. Not just to produce music either.

Cassian’s seen impalements before, and at least one from a hideously close perspective. It’s not something he likes to think about, though he sometimes has to consider it.

In any case, he finds himself the dubious safety of a curtained alcove -- but in that curtained alcove the walls are made out of floor-to-ceiling mirrors, their shadowed reflections seeming to multiply the interiors into infinity.

Seeming to multiply him into infinity, in his tuxedo and his bow tie.

He’s not wearing tails, at least, so that’s something: but still, he has too many memories of sleeping in the torn-up shreds of whatever he’d worn or salvaged from a war zone. Missing sleeves, cut-off trouser legs, or a shredded shirt. Using dubious scraps as makeshift field dressings. The rare luxury of a blanket that was neither moth-eaten nor more hole than cloth.

(The less said about having to snatch sleep between the wide gaping eyes of the dead and the fearful, the better.)

The weight of his gun against his ribs, and the weight of extra magazines on the other. The feel of the leather sheath in the small of his back: the knife secured into it is so light, it’s the presence of the sheath that he relies on for assurance.

Armed, here, as the woman with the cello joins her companions on a small red-carpeted dais and taps a fingertip against her braceleted wrist, as if to count down: and soon the ballroom fills with a complicated trill and thrill, with the dazzling sweeping cadence of four bows moving across four sets of strings, and almost familiar melodies.

Cassian pretends to nod along.

The weight of crossing the world’s time zones in too little time like a millstone hung around his neck: he curses the lack of chairs in this alcove. He has to lean against one of the walls instead, make himself appear vulnerable, appear like he’s in need of support.

Whispering outside the alcove: he pushes off as the sounds become quicker, as the sounds multiply to the point of almost drowning out the music.

Harsh rough voice, low rippling growl in the words: “I’m expected. Don’t do anything stupid.”

Pause.

The music swings up and down at the same time, rapidfire notes and a driving beat of swirling adrenaline rush.

Before he can move towards the entrance of the alcove, there’s someone stepping in to meet his eyes.

Not the high collar that catches his attention, glittering with red crystals though it might be -- nor the scandalously short hemline that ends in artfully ragged lace. Not the impressive boots on their platforms and chunky heels, or the leather gloves trimmed in silver embroidery like spiderwebs. Not even the massive bejeweled belt that gleams from the crushed black material of the dress, or the actual combat knife in its ornate scabbard, mounted onto that bejeweled belt.

He’s caught and pinned on the scar running along her jawline: it glances along the point of her chin on a tangent, and ends a mere finger-width away from her right ear. Taut dark line in her porcelain skin with its haze of freckles. Not even the shocking crimson of her lipstick can draw his attention away.

But he manages to look up and then -- there’s something worn and weary and not-quite-cruel in the tilted corners of her eyes, and he knows with absolute certainty.

He knows who she is.

“You,” he says, almost without thinking about it.

He steps forward, still looking her dead-on, and opens his hands. “Please will you dance with me?”

Rapid wash of color in her cheeks, there and gone so quickly, he thinks he might have imagined it, if only it didn’t linger in the turn of her mouth. “They’re not playing a waltz.”

“Does that matter to you?”

Her hand twitches, and he has no illusions about his continued survival, not with the way her fingers ghost over the pommel of her knife.

Strong rough grip of her hand around his.

He pulls her forward, diminishes the spaces between them, scent of musk and roses wrapping around him, and he’s close enough to watch her throat move as she swallows. 

One, two, step to the side, and they are out of the alcove and past surprised expressions, an entire corridor shimmering beneath their feet as they dance: he can’t tell whether she’s following his lead or he’s following hers.

Rise and fall of light and shadow as they move, only half the sconces in the walls providing a pale golden glow. Dark strands falling out of her braid where it’s wrapped around the crown of her head. He’s maybe close enough to see the glitter dusted onto her cheeks, but he can’t take the details in.

The way she moves, the way she favors her left side, the way she flicks glances over her shoulder every now and then: he makes himself adapt. The music is still controlling his movements. He twirls her out and reels her back in, and watches her blind spots all the while. Pivots into a tight turn and catches her quiet gasp, but he’s still moving, still keeping them going, so he can see as the tension in her shoulders nearly, nearly ebbs away.

Back into the alcove for the final steps: he catches her eyes, first. Lets his eyebrow quirk. No words needed lest they dispel the thread of the accord between his body and hers: and she responds, equally silent, equally restrained. No more than a tight little nod, little better than a bob, and he places his feet to brace her weight and his. His grip on her hand both a little closer and a little gentler.

The weight of her hand as it seizes his upper arm sends a hard jolt through him, through his sense of the music, as she holds on and he dips her, low, so low so that her hair, if it were unbound, would touch the floor.

He watches the line of her neck and shoulders, to her face that he temporarily can’t see, her unfathomable eyes looking away from him for a moment -- 

Looking out the entrance to the alcove, in fact, and the shadow hurtling towards them -- 

Purpose in that movement.

Her hand moves like a blur: and partly upside-down as she is, she draws the knife at her waist --

That frees him up: one hand still holding on to her, and the other going for his shoulder rig, the weight of the gun against his palm and his fingers, and the nearly soundless click of the action working as he cocks and sights and carefully does not touch the trigger -- 

“Let go,” she hisses.

She knows what she’s doing, he thinks: so he does.

Doesn’t hear the crash or the grunt that means impact with the floor: he just brings his other hand up so he’s got the gun in a proper grip, knees bent and shoulders relaxed, and -- _slap_ against the floor, and he’s aware of her as she pushes up from her crouch, having turned in her brief instant of falling, and she’s upright a few feet in front of him. Sure and steady on her feet. Knife in a backhanded grip and her free hand clenched into a cocked fist.

Their would-be attacker hesitates for only an instant.

It’s enough.

Cassian aims for the kneecap, inhales, fires.

She twists, waist and torso and arms -- something arcs away from her, and her blade comes to a rest in their assailant’s shoulder.

Before Cassian can holster his weapon, she’s already striding forward, already toppling the burly man over with her hands, pushing and striking -- soft hard whoosh of air, and she’s on one knee and holding him down. “We were the target?” she growls.

“Star..dust,” the fallen man chokes out around her hand clenched at his throat.

“I told you to stay down,” she says, and Cassian would recoil from the contempt in her voice if it had been directed at him, but as it isn’t he merely steps forward to rifle the man’s pockets.

“Don’t bother,” the woman mutters. “I’ve already gotten everything he was carrying.”

“Fair enough,” Cassian mutters: and he uses his own knife to open the man’s sleeves and then trouser legs, instead. “Ah.”

Smartphone to capture the image of the man’s tattoo: a head-on view of a right hand clenched into a fist, tiny, almost lost in the grooves of the left inner elbow. 

“Huh,” she says -- before she takes her boot off and bashes the man across the face with it.

Cassian doesn’t think he imagines the crack of bone shattering.

“Tell your masters to go fuck themselves,” she mutters, before stepping back into her boot. Before rising to her feet.

Cassian takes another photograph of the man’s bloodied face, the now-broken nose, the still-blooming shiner. 

Chops him across the throat.

“Good night,” he mutters.

And wipes his hand off on the man’s ill-fitting jacket. Extends it to her. “I presume you’re -- you answer to the name he called you. Stardust. Agent Stardust.”

“You assume too much.”

But she does turn around, and when she does, her mouth is quirked into something that’s not quite a smile. “Cassian Andor, I don’t presume.”

“No need to,” he says. “I will readily admit to being him.” He shakes hands. “I was sent here to find you.”

“Yes, you were. Leia says I’m to lead you to someplace. That is the extent of my task, mind. I’ve other matters to be getting on.” Her inflection is clear and razor-edged. 

“I don’t wish to delay you,” he says.

She’s taken aback -- he can see it in the sudden widening of her eyes.

But she blinks and that moment is gone. 

She straightens, lifts her head high, turns. “Follow me.”

The strains of electric-string-quartet “Kashmir” in his ears as he trails Agent Stardust out of the ballroom, out the doors, down the sidewalk and its cobbled stones.

His breath in soft wispy clouds as he paces after her.

No overcoat on her shoulders, nothing for the falling temperatures, just the tense line of her shoulders and the rapid strike of her heels against the ground.

He follows, and every once in a while he looks over his shoulder: after all, she’s leading him, so again it falls to him to watch her back.

“Who goes there,” calls a sleepy-eyed guard, suddenly.

Cassian almost goes for his gun again, but: “It’s me,” Agent Stardust says.

“Sorry, Miss, I didn’t see you there,” and there is nothing but respect and maybe an odd current of fear in those words. 

Cassian watches the guard unlock a gate shrouded in deep curtains of ivy, the leaves a faded green in this cold night, and he steps through the gate and -- 

Oh.

“Tell her I sent you,” Agent Stardust says.

He turns to look back.

The ivy climbs the gate itself and the high weathered walls surrounding the pocket park. To his left, a tall thin birdcage-like structure suspended over a statue of a voluptuous woman with a jar. To his right, a wrought-iron bench.

And Agent Stardust is still standing in the frame and the shadow of the gate. 

He can’t see her eyes or her face any more. The streetlights spill out weakly around the outline of her shoulders and legs, and conceal the rest of her from his view.

“And tell Mothma she owes me.”

Creak of a door from very close by -- Cassian whirls, does go for his own knife, doesn’t quite draw on the woman in the elegant shawl, blue lace trailing past her fingers -- “Jyn?” she asks.

For a moment, Agent Stardust seems to look away. 

Cassian only sees the shape of her jaw. Not the scar, not her eyes, not her face.

“Be well,” Agent Stardust -- Jyn -- says.

And the shadow of her turns around smartly. Vanishes into the chill and the gloom. The rapid tattoo of her footsteps, fading.

He turns back to the woman. He ought to give her her proper titles and styles, ought to speak to her with respect, but all he says is, “You know her?”

“I raised her.” Silver hair. Silver gown. Silver sadness in not-quite-faded green eyes. “Her and Leia, together.”

He remembers his manners after a long moment. Bows. “My Lady Retrac.”

“If you are here at the behest of -- Mon,” Lady Chancellor Winter Retrac says, “then I must insist that you call me by my first name. And -- I thank you for coming here at such short notice.”

When she turns away, Cassian is torn for only a brief moment: but it’s a wrench that shakes him right to the very roots of his heart, to turn away from the image of Agent Stardust.

And he turns his back on the gate that has closed behind her, turns forward to the task placed in his hands: protection duty for the Lady Chancellor, and a trip to several countries in Europe and Central Asia.

But he can still feel the flow and the movement of Agent Stardust in his arms, the elegant spareness of her, and the roughness of her voice.

**Author's Note:**

> Look me up on tumblr [@ninemoons42](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
